Traditionally, in order to increase the seating capacity the distance between adjacent rows in reduced to a minimum. In practice, in order to ensure a sufficient aisle width to allow for safe evacuation in the event of an emergency, such as a fire, this means that the seats must be pivoted between a substantially horizontal use position and a substantially vertical standby position. The seats are normally automatically raised into the standby position by a spring mechanism or the like to improve ingress and egress along the aisles formed between adjacent rows.
The comfort, and hence the length of time during which sitting persons are attentive, of such seating is able to be considerably increased by the provision of armrests.
Armrests preferably should not protrude into the aisle space and for this reason in relation to such seating the conventional armrest has a cantilever configuration and pivots in a vertical plane about a horizontal axis and can thus be swung away into a space between adjacent backseats.